Leopold and Loeb the Murder

Leopold and Loeb The murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks and the subsequent arrest and trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were heavy on the minds of the public in 1924, as the sensationalism of this extreme case were evident even to those who were closest to it. The rest of the public, in Chicago and elsewhere could rely heavily on exhaustive journalism to give them the information they sought about the events.

The manner in which the case was defended was especially important to the world, as this was one of the first such cases where information about the perpetrators was clearly displayed on headlines that always created a desire to read the story. The newspapers and magazines, in fact played out a game of conservative vs. liberal, on the issue of capital punishment, as well as competitive sensationalism and the emotions of the case were never ignored.

("Heady Tale of Magazine" B08) the purpose of this work is to assess the similarities and differences between press accounts in Chicago and elsewhere, one would assume they all printed the facts as they knew them, but they also had varied conceptions of the trial that demonstrate regional differences in public opinion and the argument was not over the guilt or innocence of the murderers or the base innocence of the victim, but it was over the controversial new science of psychology or as it was then known psychotherapy.

Newspapers all over the nation, through the Leopold and Loeb case played out the controversies of the science of the mind, while the more conservative set it aside the urban papers detailed the science as luridly as print would allow. Chicago Daily News: "There are several warnings and object lessons in the astonishing affair.

Here are...young men without religious or moral convictions, without respect for tradition and law; young men who are proud of their emancipation from all superstition and sneer at distinctions between good and evil and indulge all of their whims and caprices; young men who, with Nietzsche, talk of 'living dangerously,' seeking risk and adventure at any cost; young men who, if tempted, would not shrink even from murder, especially when saturated with ideas derived from the literature of Satanism, sadism and other perversities.

Further developments in this extraordinary case need not be anticipated, but enough is already known or reasonably suspected to give psychologists, alienists and educators plenty of food for thought and for instructive contrasts and comparisons." Busch 145) The newspaper reports of the case, where of coarse much more saturated in the Chicago area, though the case reached national and international journalistic attention, as its intrigue was evident from the beginning. In fact many argue that the journalists of the time "created" the sensationalism of the story through their zealous reporting.

Even modern renditions of the story, bent for the theatrical, such as John Logan's Never the Sinner demonstrate the sensationalism of the press, during the 1920s and how such a horrific story became the fodder for millions of dinnertime conversations. Pressley 11) On their own the newspapers press agented a series of "crimes of the century" --Loeb-Leopold, Hall-Mills, Snyder-Gray, Hauptmann -- ..

The hysterical journalism of the twenties was "in tune with the times." MacDougall 622) The defense attorney received international acclaim for his emotional pleas in the court room, pleas that many note would never be heard in a court of law today, as his goal was to avoid the death penalty, at all cost and his methods were the stuff of fiction. Cannon 1) The effect of Darrow's appeal was manifest.

As a special correspondent for one paper put it: "There was scarcely any telling where his voice had finished and where silence had begun. Silence lasted a minute, two minutes. His own eyes, dimmed by years of serving the accused, the oppressed, the weak, were not the only ones that held tears." Every newspaper in Chicago, and many throughout the nation, printed the long argument in full -- a tribute rarely paid to even the greatest of advocates.

Busch 193) Darrow was successful in his plea to not resort to the death penalty in this case, and has frequently been called upon since then to validate throwing out this option in cases since. Especially in cases involving defendants who are demonstratively young, as Loeb and Leopold were, and obviously demented by virtue of their upbringing.

The case was such a sensation that even Freud was asked to get in on the action; In 1922 the Chicago Tribune offered Freud $25,000, the equivalent of $300,000 today, to come to the United States and provide psychoanalytical commentary the Tribune could run during the trial of the 'thrill-killers' Leopold and Loeb. " Wolfe 18) Though he declined, the reality was that the Tribune, and other papers of the time were intently seeking out greater bits of knowledge to share with the public, and further sensationalize their stories.

In fact two newspapermen from the Chicago Daily News (James Mulroy and Alvin Goldstein) actually helped solve the case and were eventually given a part share in the reward money "as well as the Pulitzer Prize for helping to connect Nathan Leopold Jr. And Richard Loeb to the abduction and murder." (Fass 919) The defining moments of the trial, as well as the psychoses of the accused were played out in other papers as well.

The New York Times headline on August 5, 1924 (during the sentencing portion of the trial) demonstrates that the psychologists were the stars of testimony, as one left the defendants (on Saturday) with some semblances of humanity and the later "expert" stripped them of it by stating something to the effect of the defendants were completely lacking souls, the headline reads "ALIENIST DECLARES LEOPOLD and LOEB ARE DEVOID of SOUL; Quotes One as Saying He Could Think of Killing Just Like Choosing Pie." (NY Times 1) the lead of the article demonstrates the controversy, over psychology and expert witnesses as it opens, Another expert witness for the defense took the stand today in the hearing before Judge John R.

Caverly to determine the punishment for Nathan F. Leopold Jr. And Richard Loeb, the kidnappers and murderers of Robert Franks, and he stripped from the youths any vestige of soul, interpreted in terms of consideration for society, which was left by the first psychiatrist who testified Saturday. (NY Times 1) The controversy was replayed extensively, in all the major cities.

Each journalistic report seeking information that others had not focused on, the most damning of which being the early life of the defendants, as they were described as neglected by privilege and allowed to live as if they had no responsibilities, and rarely had supervision, beyond the supervision of governesses and in Leopold's case the perverse supervision of at least one governess, who introduced lurid sexuality into his mind and life, "She entered Leopold's life when he was just fourteen.

The record is rather vague as to her antecedents but clear enough as to the fact that she was a pervert, who initiated Leopold into the practices of and submissions to various types of sexual perversion." Loeb on the other had had strict governesses that created in him the desire to be secretive and deceptive to avoid censure.

Busch 167) All of this was fodder for the press, and the urban newspapers in Chicago and New York played upon the early lives of the boys, as the "experts" findings were distributed for publishing. The psychiatric findings brought out the conscious and unconscious sexual aspects of the case and helped the judge to arrive at a valid understanding of the defendants." Abrahamsen 11) The newspapers in Chicago and elsewhere were willing accomplices to the plans and plots of the defense and the prosecution.

Those in the urban areas, having a greater propensity to discuss issues surrounding the defense's lurid tales while those in distance tended to play up the ideas of Crowe, who was actively seeking the death penalty from the very first day of the trial. The issue was clear from the start.

Crowe, [lead prosecutor] sustained by incessant newspaper clamor and aware of the opportunity offered to further an unlimited political ambition, was prepared for an all-out effort to hang the defendants -- "defeat the effort of a million dollars to save the lives of two ruthless murderers." Darrow [lead for defense] and his associates had but one hope -- to save their clients from the gallows. It was to that end they had pleaded them guilty and obtained leave to offer evidence in mitigation of punishment.

Busch 161) One really interesting example of the manner in which the rural papers depicted the case is a short article, completely unrelated to the Leopold-Loeb case that comically demonstrates a group of golfers (likely privileged as this was a rich man's escapade at the time), inadvertently sitting on a box of dynamite during a rather frightening lightening storm. In the Sheboygan Press Telegram Wednesday Aug.

6, 1924 the story of several golfers in Kenosha Wisconsin taking shelter in an old shack on the coarse at the local Country Club, were offended by being accosted by the groundskeeper who rushed into the shack and removed a box. The groundskeeper explained to the golfers, you are lucky to be alive, "You were sitting on a box of dynamite." The headline of small yet front page article LEOPOLD and LOEB OUGHT to READ THIS.

A completely unrelated story of luck, becoms a very sobering reminder to the Sheboygan readers of the nationally infamous Chicago trial, still taking place and likely nearing the sentencing stage.

On the same front page of the paper the details of the trail are played out in a larger article where the Sheboygan paper describes details of the trial findings, including the usage of phrases such as "death blow" submitting for public perusal the findings, as to who was the actual killer, (Loeb) and using descriptive testimony of witnesses with regard to Leopold and Loeb's varying psychosis. One passage describes a moment when Leopold began to show sympathy and then promptly apologized for doing so.

(1) the clear sense that this particular paper wished to demonstrate the deviance of the defendants, rather than the "expert" medical findings of the defense claiming that each boy had a particular set of medical problems that would have caused their behavior to be erratic and potentially psychotic.

The physical examination of Leopold revealed that there had been a premature involution of the thymus gland and a premature calcification of the pineal gland in the skull; that the pituitary gland was smaller than normal; that the thyroid gland was overactive; and that the adrenal glands did not function normally. One of the doctors gave it as his opinion that these abnormalities produced an early sex development and had a direct relationship to Leopold's extraordinary precocity and his mental condition.

The physical examination of Loeb disclosed conditions which the doctors said were equally serious. His blood pressure was subnormal, the blood carbon-dioxide content was markedly low, his basal metabolism was minus seventeen. These combined conditions definitely indicated a disorder of the endocrine glands; he was subject to fainting spells and suffered a nervous disorder which manifested itself in a periodic tremor and twitching of the facial tissues. Such abnormalities, said the physician, were definitely related to Loeb's mental condition.

Busch 165) In comparison to the article detailing the gruesome acts of murder, in the Sheboygan newspaper the Chicago Daily News on June 2, 1924 details the amazing act of Nathan Leopold finding and filming a previously thought extinct bird, the Pine Warbler. The end of the article demonstrates the desire of the paper to get inside the head of the murderers, and in so doing share this holistic view with its readers.

The ornithologists with the party stood amazed at the performance despite the old and tired theory that instinct protects the wild creatures and that a sense sharper than that of humans apprises birds of a kind and sympathetic nature. So much for the picture. The student who won the confidence of the pine warblers, who stood the test of their uncanny penetration, was Nathan Leopold, facing the hangman's noose for the murder of a little boy.

(3) The paper attempted to show the boys, and their family in the light of their whole lives, including but not limited to the good deeds they had done as well as the criminal acts they had perpetrated. Irony is the clear creation of such drama, but it is also a testament to the idea that these boys where whole people before and after the gruesome crime they had committed.

Even after the case was over, Darrow noted as elated by the decision of the judge not to impose the death penalty the boy's new lives in prison are detailed for the reader in the Chicago Daily News: Slayers Write Kin of Hope of Future: Loeb Tells Mother He Seeks Salvation; Leopold Sees Enormity of His Crime. Joliet, Ill., Sept. 15 -- Sobered by prison life, "Dickie" Loeb and "Babe" Leopold wrote their first letters to an outside world to-day and agreed that Joliet was doing them a world of good.

"Dickie's" letter was to his mother, Mrs. Albert Loeb at Charlevoix, Mich. "Confinement is doing me a world of good," he wrote. "I got down on my knees last night and prayed to God to give me strength and goodness. I am trying to find God, at last. Prison life, I think, will help me to become a good man." [Leopold] "I have come to realize for the first time the real enormity of my crime," his note said.

"Last night another prisoner lent me a book, and I hope to read many volumes here. I think that prison will make a new man of me. Anyway, I am entering this new life hoping to get all the best out of it." (Mulroy 3) The article then goes on to describe the boys as model prisoners, whose only enemies are group of older hardened criminals who see their defense as weak and do not buy the ideals of psychoanalysis.

(Mulroy 3) to the writers and readers of the Chicago Daily News the boys were young men, young men who had made an enormous and cruel mistake in their well thought out and deviant and senseless random murder of Bobby Franks. The Chicago Daily News detailed the first days of the boys' lives in jail, awaiting trial as well, commenting on the events and dispositions of the boys as they dealt with jail life.

Loeb was detailed as: polite, soft-spoken white boy, in the brown dungarees of a prisoner, leaned over a table in the county jail schoolroom to-day guiding the hand of an untutored young Negro through a writing lesson. (Chicago Daily News June 3, 1924 1) The paper played on the heart strings of the public, even after the gruesome details of the crimes were made public. The boy's were seen as victims of their privileged lives.

The Chicago Daily Tribune, took another approach, polling random strangers at the Chicago Criminal Court Building about the case, one question asked, was: "Would you like to be the judge in the Leopold-Loeb trial?" One answer was: Henry Weil, 4520 Drexel boulevard, real estate. -- I wouldn't want to be the judge in this case. No matter what verdict is rendered the judge will be criticized. Seems to me the judge who has to decide the fate of these two boys holds the most difficult position in the world.

(Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1924 17) The personification of all the individuals involved was so evident in the Chicago Press that it is a wonder that the crime which was of such a senseless nature and so brutal, had actually taken place there. The same roving reporter went about the next day asking several people at a street corner: "Do you think the Franks case should be given as much publicity as it is getting?" And one answer he got was. O.C.

Tennant, 1519 East 54th street, correspondent -- We have trouble enough in this old world without continually reading about these boys' troubles. The fine points brought out by the alienist-doctors are interesting. I'd much prefer to have the same space devoted to sports, politics, or general news. (Chicago Daily Tribune August 6, 1924 19) The Chicago Daily News even did an expose describing the very human characteristics and actions of the father of Leopold, while.